VGo-Assist, A Mobile Telepresence Robot to Engage Persons with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias

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Project Summary/Abstract Assistive Technologies (AT) is a broad area of activities to support physical health, well-being, social connectedness, and ability to live independently at home. Assistive Robotics (AR) has largely referred to robots that assisted people through physical interaction, while Socially Interactive Robotics (SIR) describe machines that interact primarily through social interaction. Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) has been described as the intersection of Assistive Robotics (AR) and Socially Interactive Robotics (SIR). The goal of this Phase II project is to develop the VGo Assist robot by augmenting a social robot (VGo) with assistive technologies (AT) as part of an expandable smart home/assistive environment (AE) solution for people with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementia (ADRD). From the Phase I work, a survey study was conducted which recruited three groups of people: individuals with ADRD, family caregivers, and clinical staff who worked with ADRD patients. All of the groups agreed that VGo Assist would potentially allow an individual with ADRD to remain living along at home longer or to be left home alone for long stretches of time, and the group that showed the highest level of enthusiasm was family caregivers. Enthusiasm among this group was particularly high because they also bear a significant burden from Alzheimer’s disease. A recently published report by the Alzheimer’s Association revealed that when compared with caregivers of people without dementia, twice as many caregivers of those with dementia indicate substantial financial, emotional and physical difficulties, and 59% of family caregivers of people with ADRD rated the emotional stress of caregiving as high or very high. For Phase II, core use cases were derived from the results of the Phase I survey study, which we found to also be very consistent with findings from literature review of other similar survey studies. The specific aims for Phase II are to develop capabilities for VGo Assist which will address the use cases that were identified.